Taking Home Agamemnon. The Casts of the Lion Gate at Mycenae

Jan Driessen & Tina Kalantzopoulou

Πόλη: Louvain

Έτος: 2024

Εκδότης: Presses universitaires de Louvain

Περιγραφή: Μαλακό εξώφυλλο, 98 σ., 53 έγχρωμες και ασπρόμαυρες εικόνες

The Lion Gate is an icon, a piece of art more than 3300 years old, representing the glory of Mycenaean Greece. Preserved in situ, it has passed through time and circumstance, witnessing its own civilisation fail and many others flourishing since. Often considered as an emblem for the royal house of Mycenae, it is the only surviving piece of large-scale sculpture of the Greek Bronze Age. The quality of its creation, its symbolic force, and its prime position towering above the entrance gate to the site that epitomizes a period that gave rise to enumerable legends may be seen as framing the atmosphere in which this book was written. It is the fruit of collaboration, not only between the two authors but also between a vast community of researchers that are interested in studying and reviving plaster casts of ancient monuments. It should be seen as being part of this wider movement of rehabilitating cast collections after a long period of neglect between 1930 and 1990. Our quest – since it really was one – was initiated by the presence of a cast of the Lion Gate in a restaurant, aptly called ‘Mykene’, in Leuven, the hometown of one of the authors. Through discussions with the restaurant owner, Mr. Jo Hermans, the seeds were planted for a wider study that took us to different parts of the world, from Moscow to Chicago. It gradually became a real Odyssey, and, on this journey, we were very much accompanied by our respective partners, Florence Gaignerot-Driessen and Stefanos Apostolidis.

Περιεχόμενα

Foreword [1]
Introduction: Finding the Gate [3]
Revealing the Gate [7]
Before Schliemann [7]
Schliemann at Mycenae [14]
Casting the Gate [20]
An Athenian mould? [21]
A German mould [23]
A Malpieri (?) and Martinelli mould [24]
Other moulds? [26]
Casts of the Lion Gate – existing or no longer so [27]
Technical Aspects [59]
The Lion Gate ‘recast’: Taking Home Agamemnon [65]
Non-Reception of the cast [65]
Appreciating the Lion Gate [66]
Recasting the cast [68]
References [74]
List of Illustrations [89]
Index [93]